Militancy gets hi-tech advantage

Kupwara: Militants sneaking into India from across the border are increasingly using global positioning systems (GPS) devices in their sneak planning, posing problems to the army who have no equipment to track them as yet.

According to the soldiers manning the Line of Control (LoC) in north Kashmir’s Kupwara sector, militants now depend on the satellite-based global positioning system (GPS) instead of human guides to infiltrate into the Valley.

“Militants have gone hi-tech as they are using sophisticated devices to find their way into our side of the Valley,” said a top army official. Soldiers are currently not trained to intercept these and nor are they equipped to identify and confiscate the same.

“The incidents where militants rely on GPS to sneak into the Valley have increased in the recent past, putting pressure on the army to respond quickly to the challenge,” he said.

A GPS device can be as small as a mobile phone and is available for as little as Rs 3,000-5,000 and can be used by anyone with a little technical knowledge. Future months will see technology assist those on the other side of the law, leaving the guardians of civil lives more challenged than ever before.

Earlier infiltrators relied mostly on “not always trustworthy” human guides who used to take hefty sums in crossing the border but now the hi-tech equipment has taken over as it can easily remain untraced.

“Earlier we used to track mobile conversations between infiltrators and their guides but now we don’t have any resources to track GPS signals,” said another official.

“A person sitting kilometres away can easily guide the infiltrators and we cannot trace the signals,” he added.